Experiences From Cyberinfrastructure Development for Multi-User Remote Instrumentation

Computer-controlled scientific instruments such as electron microscopes, spectrometers, and telescopes are expensive to purchase and maintain. Also, they generate large amounts of raw and processed data that has to be annotated and archived. Cyber-enabling these instruments and their data sets using remote instrumentation cyber-infrastructures can improve user convenience and significantly reduce costs. In this paper, the authors discuss the experiences in gathering technical and policy requirements of remote instrumentation for research and training purposes. Next, they describe the cyber-infrastructure solutions.